Nova Scotia’s New Democrats have never looked so much like the Harper Conservatives, levelling one of the more personal and direct attacks against a party leader seen in paid advertising in this province’s political history.

It is no coincidence the ad, featuring a bleak, shadowed, close-up image of McNeil that grows larger as the ad nears its conclusion, was launched as pollsters are once again in the field measuring support for the province’s three dominant political parties.

The quarterly political poll by Corporate Research Associates will come out early next month, after about two weeks of polling. The NDP ad, authorized by the provincial party, was launched Monday on YouTube. I saw it during a prime-time TV spot Tuesday evening.

There is no question it is payback for McNeil’s decision — and yes, spinners, party brass and head office strategists aside, the leader has the final say on these things — to lambaste the NDP for corporate handouts the Grits say totalled $590 million.

In an almost identical pollsters-in-the-field time frame in late November, the Liberals launched an ad featuring McNeil saying, “It’s time to take the chequebook from the NDP.”

It was aggressive, bashing the New Democrats on corporate handouts after months of focus on the energy file.

The NDP’s ad this week, however, is more of a personal attack, with a stark headline: “McNeil, not the man for Nova Scotia.”

The ad targets McNeil for his position on energy, which, frankly, is more of a sore-point issue for the governing NDP than the Liberals, in a time of increasing power rates. I’m not so sure the political strategy to focus on the power issue, which McNeil has made strides on over the past two years, is completely sound.

But the NDP has clearly picked its hill of battle, with an election drawing closer and a new throne speech due in a month.

There has certainly been negative advertising in Nova Scotia politics before. The Tories and NDP took turns whipping each other in the last provincial campaign, with the outgoing Tories warning about the New Democrats’ orange tide of spending that was looming if they won government. Meanwhile, the NDP took a few cracks at then-premier Rodney MacDonald, who was nearing the end of his shelf life in politics.

It was a totally different political environment, however: The NDP now has a majority government but has trailed the Liberals badly for months. That it is attacking downward, at the leader of the official Opposition, comes across as a bit of a desperate measure aimed at discrediting the man who is now best positioned — according to the polls — to become the next premier.

The Liberals are also gearing up for a big weekend at their annual convention in Halifax, where McNeil will continue his stinging attacks against the NDP on the energy file, corporate handouts, government spending, etc.

Justin Trudeau will also be in town on the weekend for a federal Liberal leadership debate that will dovetail neatly with the provincial convention, adding a little star power to the Liberal festivities.

Naturally, speculation is ramping up about election timing. A flurry of party nominations — which have as much to do with new seat boundaries as the electoral calendar — and a string of government announcements are giving pause to suggestions that the NDP will stretch its mandate into a fifth year.

Unless the ads against McNeil are incredibly effective with devastating speed, poll numbers are still unlikely to turn soon enough to give the NDP the support it needs to mount an early spring campaign. Like the federal Conservatives with the American-style attack ads they mounted against past Liberal bosses Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff, these ads are likely meant to undermine McNeil’s popularity over a longer stretch of time.

The largest immediate question is whether Nova Scotians will see the NDP deliver on its promise to balance the books when Finance Minister Maureen MacDonald brings in her budget early in April.

In the meantime, there is no question that Nova Scotia politics has headed down a darker road with the attack ad that came out this week. Unfortunately, once political parties go down that road — as American and federal Canadian politics have already illustrated — there is no turning back.